Biological WMD

I came upon a very interesting read last night. While some of my friends were falling into the traps of one of America's top consumerism traps -St. Valentine-, I snobbed the evening away by hidding at the SIPA library: Ken Alibek's Biohazard: A first hand Cold War account of a top scientist responsible for a large chunk of the Soviet Union's secret biological weapon's program. The book, an easy read that will keep you awake all night -and not because it is minus 10c outside-, explains in laymen's terms how easy it is to develop such a program and the risks we are currently facing.

Biological weapons have always been considered the poor man's nuclear bomb. Believe it or not, you can nowadays create a facility for as little as $10 million, making them easily available to rogue states and terrorists. Alibek, in an interview given in 1999, said that there are probably former Soviet scientists familiar with bio-weapon technology working in the so-called rogue states.

Even though the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) bans the production, stockpiling and transfer of Biological and Toxin Weapons, the treaty was weakened from the beginning by the absence of formal and systematic ways of verification or enforcement. This was tragically evidenced by the 1979 Soviet Union's accident in their top secret plant at Sverdlosk. More than a hundred people died because a filter was not replaced by a technician who left for home in a rush! As the scientifical community likes to say, human nature always triumphs over the best designs.

Biological weapons have the unfortunate advantage of dual use. That is, how can you know that laboratories are being used for pharmaceutical purposes or to make weapons? Enforcement measures of the BWC should be immediately implemented. Talks have been going on for the last 15 years. The Clinton administration tried to reach an agreement, but the moment Bush took over, everything was halted again. The pressure from pharmaceutical lobbies was just too great for this president. They were afraid their secrets would be revealed if an international commission of experts visited their facilities. I guess some prefer to be dead than to run the risk of sharing a vaccine...

Anyway, the one question experts have not yet been able to answer is tragic: Why, if everything is so simple about them, have biological weapons not been used more? A question I should not make; self-fulfilling prophecies are dangerous things...

Nuclear proliferation is a big thing and all diplomatic efforts to halt it should be vigoriously pursued, but beware of biological weapons.